It’s been another busy year for Dundee star Brian Cox.
The 76-year-old – famed for playing Logan Roy in TV blockbuster Succession – shot the fourth series of the HBO show, fronted a Channel 5 documentary about the richest and poorest in society and also returned to the City of Discovery for an event at the DCA.
But the Stobswell-born actor has also hit the headlines with no-holds-barred takes on a range of subjects, including politics, Hollywood and the class system.
The Courier picks out his most passionate pleas and most withering putdowns.
Johnny Depp
The high-profile defamation case involving Johnny Depp and Amber Heard grabbed the attention of the world’s media in June.
And fellow Hollywood star Cox admitted he felt sorry for Heard following the verdict.
In an interview with The Times three months later, he said: “I feel sorry for the woman [Heard]. I think she got the rough end of it.”
His comments came a year after he’d taken aim at the screen superstar – calling him “overblown” and “overrated” – in his memoir Putting the Rabbit in the Hat.
He wrote: “I mean, Edward Scissorhands. Let’s face it, if you come on with hands like that and pale, scarred-face make-up, you don’t have to do anything. And he didn’t.
“And subsequently, he’s done even less.
“But people love him. Or they did love him. They don’t love him so much these days, of course.”
Cox later told US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel he regretted the remarks.
Liz Truss
In October, he raged against the then-prime minister, stating that she was the “wrong person” for the job.
Speaking on BBC’s Question Time, Cox said: “I cannot see how she can lead the country, and I don’t think she can lead the country because I don’t think people trust her.
“And if you don’t have trust, you don’t have anything.
“She’s the wrong person for the job. There’s something about her that I simply do not trust.”
Cox was previously a Labour supporter before defecting to the SNP due to his support for independence.
Truss was ousted as leader after just 45 days in office – becoming the shortest-serving PM in the process.
JK Rowling’s critics
Harry Potter author JK Rowling has been accused of transphobia by her critics but Cox has leapt to her defence on more than one occasion, including in a 2020 interview with Reader’s Digest.
This year he went even further.
In an interview with Piers Morgan on TalkTV in May, the 75-year-old slammed Rowling’s critics, and described cancel culture as “a kind of modern-day McCarthyism”.
He said: “I find the whole thing completely hypocritical. I am not religious but there is a thing in the Bible where it says, ‘Let he or she without sin cast the first stone’, and there seems to be a lot of casting of stones. And it is like a virus.”
The show’s host Morgan described cancel culture as a form of fascism, to which Cox responded: “You are absolutely right. It is total fascism.”
Dundee poverty levels
The Hollywood actor visited the city he grew up in while filming Channel 5 documentary How The Other Half Live.
In the programme that aired last month, he said: “It’s shocking how Dundee’s gone pretty much full circle, getting back to the poverty I saw as a kid.
“It’s extremely painful this stuff, you know. It’s painful for anybody if you’ve got any sensibility at all.
“This stuff is f***ing painful. And I find it really difficult.”
Boris Johnson
Cox did not hold back when asked for his thoughts in February on then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Speaking on Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine Show, the Succession star called Johnston an “Eton clown”.
He said: “I really do believe he needs psychiatric help.
“You’re a compulsive liar and a country really does not need a compulsive liar running the show.
“We have an expression in Scotland which is, you should ‘Haud yer wheesht’.”
Hollywood
It is famous for its glitz and glamour but the Scot says it is “the worst place in the world to raise female children”.
In an interview with The Telegraph in October, he said: “Hollywood is a very difficult place to live, and it is the worst place in the world to raise female children.
“There are so many pressures on young women already, and it just exacerbates them”
Method acting
Robert De Niro and Daniel Day-Lewis, look away now.
De Niro famously got a real license and worked 12-hour shifts as a cabbie to prepare for his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and these days it’s common to hear the lengths actors go to get ready for roles.
Cox, however, is having none of it.
And he made his feelings clear in September while doing a Q&A at the Toronto Film Festival to promote his film Prisoner’s Daughter.
He said: “I don’t hold a lot of the American s**t, having to have a religious experience every time you play a part. It’s c**p.
“I don’t hang onto the characters I play. I let them go through me.”
Billions
Cox threw shade at Showtime smash Billions when asked at the Emmys if there were plans for a fifth season of Succession.
Speaking to The Times three months ago, he said: “Who knows how long it [Succession] will go on?
“We don’t want it to overstay its welcome, like Billions; that’s past its sell-by date.
“That will not happen with our show.”
‘Class-ridden’ UK system
Not one to shy away from politics, Cox spoke of his fury towards the “class-ridden” system of the UK.
During an appearance in August at the Edinburgh TV Festival, the actor – who began his acting career at age 14 at Dundee Rep – questioned whether he would be able to have an acting career if he was starting out today.
He said: “Now, people from my past, they have not the same kind of access, which I think is bloody disgraceful.
“People like Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic West, Eddie Redmayne – they all went to public schools and the public school system has these amazing state-of-the-art theatres and they are usually taught by actors who are now teachers, because their acting didn’t work out.”
Cox said students from fee-paying schools “go to drama school and of course they can afford to pay”.
He added: “Now it is hard to get. I couldn’t do it now.
“I just simply could not do it.”
